Is Personal Finance considered Social Studies?

tamagotchi
Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:45:29 +0000

Ohno2:

Even UMich, which I referenced earlier in the thread, says explicitly on their admissions page that they only require three years (even though their CDS reports four are required).

If the CDS says four and the admissions page says three, I think your student would want to contact them to clarify.

Ohno2:

Do posters on CC need to revise the often articulated advice that all students need four years of social studies/history?

I do think the standard CC advice is helpful: that is, students (who plan to apply to selective colleges) should ideally aim to include challenging courses in each core area in each of the four years of high school, and then add additional depth or electives, as space in the schedule allows. (And in some cases, an “elective” or two may also be required for a student, such as the CA publics requiring an arts class.) So I do think the “ideal” schedule, all else being equal, would include 4 years of social science / history.

When a high school has specific other requirements, though, especially if there are limited slots in the schedule such as a 6 period day… the student may need to make tradeoffs where their schedule might not be “ideal” in some aspect, but might still be sufficient. And when making these tradeoffs, it’s a good idea to look at schools’ stated requirements and recommendations (on their web site and CDS), as you definitely don’t want to fall short of requirements, and it’s probably not good to fall short of recommendations either. Of course the interests of the student and their intended major are going to come into play too, when making tradeoffs.

I know that’s kind of long-winded and peppered with a lot of “it depends…”